Closure for Waterview Connection’s big move rescheduled

The NZ Transport Agency says the
planned closure of a section of one of Auckland’s key
arterial roads to move a heavy segment of the Waterview
Connection’s giant tunnel boring machine has been
postponed 24 hours.

The closure of Sandringham Road
between Gifford and O’Donnell Avenues was scheduled to
happen tonight, but will now go ahead tomorrow (Thursday, 25
July).

The Transport Agency says the move is being
re-organised because of changes to the schedule for
unloading the ship that brought the disassembled tunnel
boring machine from China.

“We apologies for any
inconvenience the change may cause, and we will shift this
heavy piece of equipment as quickly and as safely as we can
across Auckland so that any disruption is kept to a
minimum,” says the Transport Agency’s acting Regional
Highways Manager, Steve Mutton.

“It’s a big operation
getting a hundred parts of the tunnel boring machine from
the wharf to the construction site, but it is running
smoothly and the 24 hour delay for this heavy shift is not
affecting our timetable.”

The closure is necessary to
enable a crane to lift steel plates into position over a
culvert near the Wesley Community Centre and reinforce the
road to take the extra weight. The Maioro Street southbound
on-ramp to the Southwestern Motorway (State Highway 20) will
also close tomorrow for the move. The closure will be in
place between midnight and 5amm and there are
detours.

Both Sandringham Road and the Maioro Street
on-ramp will be closed again on Sunday night (28 July) when
the second of the heaviest loads is transported to the
Waterview Connection construction site.

The TBM, which is
known as Alice, is the 10th biggest machine of its kind in
the world and is custom-built to bore twin tunnels 2.4km
long to connect the Northwestern (SH16) and Southwestern
(SH20) motorways with three lanes of traffic in each
direction.

Alice will be reassembled at the southern end
of the Waterview Connection construction site to be ready to
start tunnelling in late October.

The $1.4 billion
Waterview Connection is the biggest of several Transport
Agency projects underway or planned to complete the Western
Ring Route – an alternative motorway for Auckland that
will improve city and regional transport links as part of
the Government’s roads of national significance programme
to help economic growth. It is being built by the
Well-Connected Alliance comprising the NZ Transport Agency,
McConnell Dowell, Fletcher, Parsons Brinckerhoff, Obayashi,
Beca, and Tonkin&Taylor.

If you have any questions about
the TBM transport, please contact the Waterview Connection
project’s 24-hour phone line: 0508 TUNNEL (88 66
35).

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